Scandinavian Seminar

ABSTRACT: Very few Jews fleeing from the Holocaust in Central Europe between 1937 and 1945 managed to reach the safety of the shores of Iceland, which was not a major player in this catastrophic event, but was also not a non-participant. Melitta Urbancic, a Viennese Jewish author and actress, was one of these very few. Under dramatic circumstances, she was allowed to settle in Iceland in late 1938, where she remained for the rest of her long life. As we now know, when she died in Reykjavík in 1984 she left behind a voluminous oeuvre of German-language poetry, a selection of which appeared in 2014 in the bilingual Icelandic-German book Frá hjara veraldar. Vom Rand der Welt, edited by Gauti Kristmannsson, which contains the only works of Melitta Urbancic that are in print in any language. This review article presents the adventurous saga of Melitta Urbancic, includes some of her poems in German and in English translation, and looks at the special quality of her relationship to Iceland, her writing style, and the content of the poetry as it changed from that of a traumatized refugee in a very foreign environment to someone who gradually found a new home.

At the 4th Ovarian Cancer Consensus Conference of the Gynecologic Cancer InterGroup (GCIG) held in Vancouver, Canada, in June 2010, representatives of 23 cooperative research groups studying gynecologic cancers gathered to establish international consensus on issues critical to the conduct of large randomized trials. The process focused on 13 predetermined questions. Group A, 1 of the 3 discussion groups, addressed the first 5 questions, examining first-line therapies in newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients. A1: What are the appropriate end points for different trials (maintenance, upfront chemotherapy trials including molecular drugs)? A2: Are there any subgroups defined by tumor biology who need specific treatment options/trials? A3: Is the 2004 GCIG-recommended standard comparator arm still valid? A4: What is the role of modifying dose, schedule, and delivery of chemotherapy? A5: What role does surgery play today?